{"product_id":"east-of-eden-isbn-9780670033041","title":"East of Eden","description":"\u003cb\u003eA masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America’s most enduring authors, in a commemorative hardcover edition\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eIn his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called \u003ci\u003eEast of Eden\u003c\/i\u003e \"the first book,\" and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, \u003ci\u003eEast of Eden\u003c\/i\u003e is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. Adapted for the 1955 film directed by Elia Kazan introducing James Dean, and read by thousands as the book that brought Oprah’s Book Club back, East of Eden has remained vitally present in American culture for over half a century.\"A novel planned on the grandest possible scale...One of those occasions when a writer has aimed high and then summoned every ounce of energy, talent, seriousness, and passion of which he was capable...It is an entirely interesting and impressive book.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe New York Herald Tribune\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"A fantasia and myth...a strange and original work of art.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"A moving, crying pageant with wilderness strengths.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Carl Sandburg\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"When the book club ended a year ago, I said I would bring it back when I found the book that was moving…and this is a great one. I read it for myself for the first time and then I had some friends read it. And we think it might be the best novel we've ever read!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Oprah Winfrey\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eJohn Steinbeck\u003c\/b\u003e, born in Salinas, California, in 1902, grew up in a fertile agricultural valley, about twenty-five miles from the Pacific Coast. Both the valley and the coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction.  In 1919 he went to Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 without taking a degree.  During the next five years he supported himself as a laborer and journalist in New York City, all the time working on his first novel, \u003cb\u003eCup of Gold\u003c\/b\u003e (1929).\u003cp\u003eAfter marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two California books, \u003cb\u003eThe Pastures of Heaven\u003c\/b\u003e (1932) and \u003cb\u003eTo a God Unknown\u003c\/b\u003e (1933), and worked on short stories later collected in \u003cb\u003eThe Long Valley\u003c\/b\u003e (1938).  Popular success and financial security came only with \u003cb\u003eTortilla Flat \u003c\/b\u003e(1935), stories about Monterey’s paisanos.  A ceaseless experimenter throughout his career, Steinbeck changed courses regularly.  Three powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the California laboring class: \u003cb\u003eIn Dubious Battle\u003c\/b\u003e (1936), \u003cb\u003eOf Mice and Men\u003c\/b\u003e (1937), and the book considered by many his finest, \u003cb\u003eThe Grapes of Wrath\u003c\/b\u003e (1939).  \u003cb\u003eThe Grapes of Wrath\u003c\/b\u003e won both the \u003cb\u003eNational Book Award\u003c\/b\u003e and the \u003cb\u003ePulitzer Prize\u003c\/b\u003e in 1939.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEarly in the 1940s, Steinbeck became a filmmaker with \u003cb\u003eThe Forgotten Village\u003c\/b\u003e (1941) and a serious student of marine biology with \u003cb\u003eSea of Cortez\u003c\/b\u003e (1941).  He devoted his services to the war, writing Bombs Away (1942) and the controversial play-novelette \u003cb\u003eThe Moon is Down\u003c\/b\u003e (1942).  \u003cb\u003eCannery Row\u003c\/b\u003e (1945), \u003cb\u003eThe Wayward Bus\u003c\/b\u003e (1948), another experimental drama, \u003cb\u003eBurning Bright\u003c\/b\u003e (1950), and \u003cb\u003eThe Log from the Sea of Cortez\u003c\/b\u003e (1951) preceded publication of the monumental \u003cb\u003eEast of Eden\u003c\/b\u003e (1952), an ambitious saga of the Salinas Valley and his own family’s history.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe last decades of his life were spent in New York City and Sag Harbor with his third wife, with whom he traveled widely.  Later books include \u003cb\u003eSweet Thursday\u003c\/b\u003e (1954), \u003cb\u003eThe Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication\u003c\/b\u003e (1957), \u003cb\u003eOnce There Was a War \u003c\/b\u003e(1958), \u003cb\u003eThe Winter of Our Discontent \u003c\/b\u003e(1961), \u003cb\u003eTravels with Charley in Search of America \u003c\/b\u003e(1962), \u003cb\u003eAmerica and Americans\u003c\/b\u003e (1966), and the posthumously published \u003cb\u003eJournal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters\u003c\/b\u003e (1969), \u003cb\u003eViva Zapata!\u003c\/b\u003e (1975), \u003cb\u003eThe Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights\u003c\/b\u003e (1976), and \u003cb\u003eWorking Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath\u003c\/b\u003e (1989).\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSteinbeck received the \u003cb\u003eNobel Prize in Literature\u003c\/b\u003e in 1962, and, in 1964, he was presented with the \u003cb\u003eUnited States Medal of Freedom\u003c\/b\u003e by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Steinbeck died in New York in 1968. Today, more than thirty years after his death, he remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[1]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e THE SALINAS VALLEY is in Northern California. It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey Bay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer—and what trees and seasons smelled like—how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother. They were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love. The Santa Lucias stood up against the sky to the west and kept the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and brooding—unfriendly and dangerous. I always found in myself a dread of west and a love of east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that the morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back from the ridges of the Santa Lucias. It may be that the birth and death of the day had some part in my feeling about the two ranges of mountains.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom both sides of the valley little streams slipped out of the hill canyons and fell into the bed of the Salinas River. In the winter of wet years the streams ran full-freshet, and they swelled the river until sometimes it raged and boiled, bank full, and then it was a destroyer. The river tore the edges of the farm lands and washed whole acres down; it toppled barns and houses into itself, to go floating and bobbing away. It trapped cows and pigs and sheep and drowned them in its muddy brown water and carried them to the sea. Then when the late spring came, the river drew in from its edges and the sand banks appeared. And in the summer the river didn’t run at all above ground. Some pools would be left in the deep swirl places under a high bank. The tules and grasses grew back, and willows straightened up with the flood debris in their upper branches. The Salinas was only a part-time river. The summer sun drove it underground. It was not a fine river at all, but it was the only one we had and so we boasted about it—how dangerous it was in a wet winter and how dry it was in a dry summer. You can boast about anything if it’s all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Viking","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304700236005,"sku":"NP9780670033041","price":39.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780670033041.jpg?v=1767725809","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/east-of-eden-isbn-9780670033041","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}